27 October 2009

Performing is such a tough job. I admire how you throw yourself into it. Your acting is truly method. Though you do have a tendency to make those around you possessive.

Air-kisses,PP (aka Present Participle)

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Dear Dangling Modifier,

Please keep this on the QT. I am secretly envious of you. You're such a carefree spirit, a reckless prince. After causing mayhem, the kingdom awaits your next crazy dance-step.

Yours covertly,HRH

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Mr Stress Ball

If I throw you at the window, will my colleague know it's a summons? Or will the window break?

Ms Identity Crisis

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This is a public announcement for all in-trays,

It has come to our attention that many of you are overflowing in a most haphazard and unappealing manner. As part of our new management strategy we request that you take some initiative and archive yourself.

Seriously,Senior Streamliner

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Attention i, t, s & apostrophe,

Please stop misbehaving. I understand that you are all extremely close and want to be together on every occasion, but you KNOW that is not always appropriate and you can't be possessive. I'm very sorry apostrophe, but sometimes you just have to let the letters play by themselves.

With stern regards,Coach Crackdown

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Dear Spring Winds,

It's true that you help dry the washing, but you are frazzling our nerves. Also, we have it on good authority that you're planning to disappear for a while before returning disguised as the baking-hot North wind. Please reconsider.

23 October 2009

Over at Spike, Jess has mounted a spirited defence of the second person point of view. It's a POV that does tend to divide opinion, and if maintained for a whole novel can drive the reader to throw the book across the room, but used sparingly it can be a very powerful device.

I was definitely disconcerted the first time I opened a novel written in the second person. It was a male character and as a female reader I was confronted, and simultaneously drawn in. The book was Snake by Kate Jennings.

Snake is not written entirely in second person, but that's how it begins (and ends) and consequently it insists we inhabit the role of the character, Rex. We are bound to him. So we are immediately thrust into a major theme of the novel: disappointment - the failure to fulfil desires or expectations.

The first chapter opens:

"Everybody likes you. A good man. Decent. But disappointed. Who wouldn't be? That wife. Those children."

And Snake prepares us early. You know what you are in for.The first chapter ends:

"Every reason to be disappointed, although that word implies expectations, and you never had many of them."

This is not simply disappointment. This is an absence of hope. This is despair. And the second person narration drenches us in disenchantment.

And when it hits the mark for a reader, second person hits hard. The second chapter begins:

"You grew up on a farm, a thousand acres of chalky soil, a rainfall to break the strongest spirit. The days always began with your father, shoulders hunched against the half-light of dawn, trekking across the yard, past the clothesline, to the rainfall gauge."

I grew up on a farm. The days began with my father at dawn. The rain gauge was an object of worship.

Jennings captured a part my life here. Her use of second-person connected me to the book in a way I had never been connected before, and in response I found myself whispering: "Yes".

The second-person parts (One and Four) are short, and this judicious use is extremely effective. It is such a relief to shrug off Rex's despair and settle in to a more conventional narrative.

Not that the despair is ever entirely shrugged off. Snake is a small-town book. It traces the lives of Rex, a farmer seeking the simple pleasures of farming life, and Irene, a woman plagued by discontent and dreams of escape. It is not a good match. It is an anxious, despairing tale, but beautifully written and enhanced by being book-ended by a second-person narrator.

22 October 2009

For all of my life - for my whole, entire life up until a week ago - I thought that 'riz' was an adjective that meant something along the lines of 'awesome'. You know, like 'It's springtime and the grass is so totally riz right now.'

Although, to say I thought that is perhaps a bit of an overstatement. I'd never actually stopped to consider it; I'd never defined it to myself. I just sort of felt it. It was the vibe of the thing.

Then, just the other day, I was walking around the back streets of North Fitzroy hoping to find a lemon tree hanging over a fence so I could nick a lemon or two, when it came to me in a blinding white flash. I had an epiphany: Riz actually means 'has risen'. The grass has risen. Oh, it makes such sense. It's in theme. It's a real word (sort of).

And yet, it's also disappointing. I feel robbed that 'riz' is just a comic version of a mildly pedestrian word.

I want MY riz back. But, alas, the magic's gone. It's not as if I ever used riz anywhere else ('You should definitely buy that dress, it's really riz on you.'*), but it was just there in that specific context, being riz. And now it's not.

We've explored words that sound as though they ought to mean something else, and words and phrases that often get mixed up, but have you ever been a little bit heartbroken to discover that a word wasn't what you thought it was? Do you ever intentionally misuse words because you like them better the way you thought they were? In short, have you ever been betrayed by a word?

*Although, with its real meaning, riz in a dress could be rather fetching on a lady with the right kind of legs.

15 October 2009

We're having a quietly proud moment, because this Sunday at 1 pm* the first of two documentaries based on Maralinga -The Aṉangu Story will be shown on ABC Message Stick.

The documentaries were filmed in August at Oak Valley and Yalata communities and at Maralinga. And they should be really worth watching.

'I was worried about my country. I grieved. I was upset about what the bombs would do to the land... The people who have done the damage should take it away. They should please clean up the place properly. My birthplace got bombed down. The bomb ruined my country, they spoiled all my country. People died north side and west side. Fell down and died. I am sad.' -- Myra Watson

Sad man by Yvonne Edwards

Do tune in if you get a chance.

Go here for more about Message StickAnd here for more about Maralinga - The Aṉangu Story

13 October 2009

Much to the disgust of She Who Will Remain Nameless (Actually, since the shameful confessions in the last post, I like to call her Josie Pye), I want to talk about Anne some more.Really, it's Josie's fault - she planted the seed.

So anyway... The books are my first and abiding love, but I did enjoy the miniseries too. At least, I enjoyed the first two. I didn't know until today that THERE IS A THIRD!

Anne of Green Gables: the Continuing Story

Judging by the story synopsis here, it is a total departure from the books. (TOTAL, UTTER, COMPLETE DEPARTURE)

But, let's face it, AofGG: The Sequel is a very odd mishmash of books, and I still enjoyed it.

12 October 2009

In circles such as these it is often wiser to keep some things quiet. But I am casting caution out into the wind, no, the sun, no, the hail, no, the passing shower - oh, no, it's the sun again.*

Okay. Here we go, ready or not: Anne of Green Gables is not my friend.

There. I said it. And it's true. In fact, I might even go as far as to say that at one stage Anne Shirley was my arch enemy.

I know. It sounds extreme, but they were desperate times.

Here's the thing: my best friend was introduced to little orphan Anne, and her literary ambitions and her quaint misadventures and her charming chatterbox manner and her winning red hair - and immediately adored her (of course, who didn't?). And then she talked about her incessantly, as you do when you make a new friend.

I tolerated the initial round of "Anne says this" and "Anne says that" with mild flutterings of newly-awakened jealousy. But then it segued into: "Anne would do it. She would come to my aid at once, without the slightest hesitation." And: "Anne would be unafraid to embark on this adventure." And: "I wish Anne were here, she would understand."

Well, clearly it was a competition and I had no choice but to take an anti-Anne stance. So I did. I refused to read about her; I refused to watch her; I refused to engage with her in any way. (Of course later I realised that, KNOW YOUR ENEMY would have been a far better strategy to employ, but at the time I chose DENIAL.) And everybody knew it. And so the Anne-baiting began in earnest. Alas.

The piece-de-resistance of the Anne Wars occurred many years after the initial outbreak of hostilities. While in Canada my friend's sister went to Prince Edward Island to visit Anne's house. She sent me an official Anne of Green Gables House postcard. It read:

This is the view from my tent!

(ps: I signed your name in the visitor's book.)

So, as it happens, not so much kindred spirit over here.**

*Melbourne weather - you do like to show your range - a bit like Toni Collette.** Over here! Over here! There's a kindred spirit stuck over here in the footnotes! This Onion is a proud, card-carrying member of the race that knows Joseph. This Onion turns to Anne for comfort, wisdom, amusement and scope for the imagination. But ... this Onion has always been a bit sceptical about that Diana Barry - is she really worthy of being Anne's bosom friend?

02 October 2009

Is it a font?Is it a cheese?Is it a foneese? (Actually we made that up. Can you tell?)Cheese or font?*An inexplicably compelling option for whiling away a Friday afternoon.**

*With regard to results we are instituting a don't ask, don't tell policy.** Not that we are whiling away our Friday afternoon, of course. Oh no, Ma'am, we are all atoil, with our designing, our editing, our publishing, our wrangling, and there's not even cake...